A way everyone wins

Recently I was playing chess with my young son and he beat me – fair and square. I was happy for him, but at the same time I could feel the pull of a desire to win. It's embarrassing to admit, but with the sting of defeat getting the best of me, I started to wonder if I was good at anything.

But then, what came with that quiet struggle was an overwhelming sense of love that I can only describe as a divine sense of Mother Love – love from God. I realized how grateful I was that my son was flourishing; learning, practicing, and expressing the skills he was taught. It urged me to see that allowing others to flourish reflects well on me, too. That my joy is not solely found in being recognized, but in knowing that the bounty of my own experience requires a fuller expression – a spiritual expression, manifested beyond myself. In these few moments, I felt that I glimpsed God’s love for each of us. As Love's spiritual image, we are each wanted and needed in order to fully express the overflowing largeness of God’s love.

A conscious awareness of what we each are – a God-given, God-blessed spiritual idea – is something Christian Science helps me understand more fully. Everyone we meet up with, family and strangers alike, are important to the world. Just as my son is currently using his divinely-appointed intelligence to be a talented chess player, we each can bring out the fullness of our individual expression of God, in our own unique, creative way – and that naturally includes the ability to cherish ways that others are expressing God, too.

This article was adapted from the May 10, 2017, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast.